POLITICO Playbook: Trump’s closing argument
HOW CAN YOU SAY you support masks, if the Covid-stricken president of the United States walks into the White House and takes off his mask publicly before filming a video without said mask -- even if he was standing far away from everyone?
HOW CAN YOU SAY you trust scientists, and then tell scientists their standards are too onerous?
HOW CAN YOU SAY Covid is not a big deal as your doctors say when you’re not yet out of the woods less than a week after you get the virus?
HOW CAN YOU SAY don't let Covid “dominate” your life -- as President DONALD TRUMP did in a video Monday night -- when you’ve just left a hospital in which you were pumped with experimental medicine that almost no one can get, under the care of a team of world-class physicians in a hospital wing that’s for you and you alone?
CNN’S JAKE TAPPER on the TRUMP VIDEO: “I would like to know who at the White House watched this and said, ‘Yes, that’s great, he caught the virus to lead, this is a winning message, post it.’”
N.Y. POST: “FACE OFF” … NYT: “LEAVING HOSPITAL, TRUMP MINIMIZES VIRUS RISK” -- with an ANNA MONEYMAKER photo of TRUMP taking his mask off.
NYT’S MAGGIE HABERMAN and ANNIE KARNI, with a Political Memo bug: “Trump’s Campaign Saw an Opportunity. He Undermined It”: “On Friday, even as President Trump had trouble getting enough oxygen and aides prepared to move him to the nation’s top military hospital, some of his campaign advisers saw a potential opportunity.
“If Mr. Trump recovered quickly from his bout with the coronavirus and then appeared sympathetic to the public in how he talked about his own experience and that of millions of other Americans, he could have something of a political reset. The health crisis, one campaign official said, was a setback in a re-election campaign that polls have shown him losing for months, but also a chance to demonstrate a new stance toward the virus that might win over some voters.
“And the president could use that to show from now until the second presidential debate, scheduled for Oct. 15, that the disease is serious but can be combated, and that he was ready to re-enter the campaign.
“While that was the hope, it was severely undermined over the last few days by the president’s own behavior — no more so than Monday when he tweeted to the nation ‘Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life!’ without acknowledging that, as president, he gets far better care than the average citizen. His comments signaled a far likelier reality: that the erratic handling of his illness by Mr. Trump and his aides will remind voters of his administration’s failures and efforts to play down the deadly pandemic for six months.”
